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To avoid needing to store the credentials for students while we are waiting for them to register, we can switch from pre-generating the credentials when making the accounts to generating them on the fly when the student registers.

In order to represent the state of an account for a student that hasn't registered yet, we need to introduce the possibility of an account having a null password hash. Logic is added to the credential checking function to block access to such accounts until a password hash has been set.

The existing support for creating accounts with passwords is not affected, though the old registration table is removed, so it is no longer possible to create an account with specific credentials that can be retrieved using the registration page. Only a new randomly generated password for an account with no password hash and a given student ID can be obtained.

A better approach to handling registration (that importantly does not
involve storing plain text passwords in a database ever) will involve
storing a null password hash for an unregistered user.

The binary blob is updated to reflect the new schema.

A check is added to the check_credentials function to handle a null
password hash and prevent the user from logging in even though currently
hyperspace will never create such accounts.
Now that password hash can be null, we don't need to require a password
when creating a user. The user can be created and then their password can
be set later using `hyperspace --mutate-password`.
if a user has a null password hash they will not be able to log in
so this can be used to lock the account. It can be unlocked again
by setting a password with `hyperspace --mutate-password`.
This function makes it easier to add more ways to retrieve credentials
because it can use positive logic and early return if it is successful
and leave the negative logic early return for the main function.
They will receive a new randomly generated password and the hash will
be updated in the database.
We can stop providing a password when creating the user so that
a random one will be generated when they register using the new
system.

We then capture the password from the registration page to use
it when logging in instead of a hard-coded password.
Now that passwords can be generated for students with a null
password hash, we can remove the old way of dealing with
pending account data.

We can remove the code that looks for entries in it during
registration, and remove the code that adds credentials to
it during account creation.

Those are the only references to the table, so we can remove
the class for it from the db file, and update the binary
blob for the empty db to reflect the new schema.
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lgtm

@theyoyojo theyoyojo merged commit 1c5ed25 into master May 6, 2024
@theyoyojo theyoyojo deleted the registration branch May 6, 2024 22:26
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3 participants